Gennady Zyuganov

Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov (26 June 1944-) was a Russian politician who served as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation from 14 February 1993, succeeding Valentin Kuptsov.

Biography
Gennady Zyuganov was bron in Mymrino, Oryol Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union on 26 June 1944, and he worked as a high school physics teacher, following in the footsteps of his family, which consisted mostly of educators. From 1963 to 1966, he served in a chemical intelligence unit of the Soviet Army's Group of Soviet Forces in Germany during the Cold War. In 1966, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and he began party work in Oryol Oblast in 1967. He became First Secretary of the local Komsomol chapter, and he organized parties and dances. In 1980, he became regional party chief for ideology and propaganda after graduating from the Academy of Social Sciences, and he was a critic of Mikhail Gorbachev's capitalist perestroika and glasnost policies. As the CPSU fell into disarray in 1991, Zyuganov helped with the creation of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, becoming its chairman. Zyuganov criticized Boris Yeltsin's regime and called for a return to the pre-Gorbachev socialism, and he became a serious challenger to Yeltsin in the 1993 and 1995 parliamentary elections. In 1996, he won 32% of the vote during the presidential elections, narrowly losing to Yeltsin's 35%. Zyuganov appealed to Russian nationalism, accusing pro-West capitalists of infiltrating the economy and ruining the country; his messages resonated with several impoverished people who had seen better days under Soviet rule. In 2008, he received 17.76% of the vote during the presidential elections, losing to Dmitry Medvedev's United Russia party, which had 70.23% of the vote. Zyuganov would later be accused of financing Russian separatists in Ukraine during the Donbass War in 2014, and the Ukrainian Internal Ministry opened investigations into Zyuganov's role in assisting the insurgents.